 Getting scammed is an extremely distressing experience - and three iTandCoffee clients suffered that terrible experience recently.
One client found that someone had gained access to a range of her social media accounts - and had even changed the password and email address for one of these, so she was no longer able to access it. Another client fell for a scam call, and the scammers initiated transfers of thousands of dollars - which were luckily stopped by her bank. The third client received as strange message on her screen - saying she had a virus and to call the number provided, which she did. Let's look at what happened in each of these cases - and what lessons can be learned from each.
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13/8/2021 0 Comments Beware of this nasty text message - especially if you are have an Android phone
Some of you will have received this warning from me in an email on Friday 13th, and you have probably seen alerts in the press.
But for those of you who haven't seen any of these alerts ...
Please beware of a nasty text message that many of us have been receiving this week - sometimes over and over. It has different variations, but looks something like that in the image above - saying that you have missed a call (usually spelt wrong) and to tap the link to listen. 7/5/2021 0 Comments A cautionary tale ... Just last week, I received a call from a very distressed client.
She was expecting a delivery and had been tricked by one of those texts that told her she needed to pay a small amount of money to receive her delivery. It got worse from there, and resulted in the scammers gaining remote access to her computer and then accessing her bank account and attempting to steal a large amount of money from that account. This occurred when the scammers called her after she responded to that fake delivery text. I suspect it is no co-incidence that hers is one of the millions of numbers stolen from Facebook in 2018, something that Facebook has just disclosed. (Here's our recent article on this: Have your details been stolen in the recently reported Facebook Data Breach?). Those of us who have mobile numbers on that list can probably expect lots more scam texts as a result of that breach. This stressful incident highlighted to me, once again, the vulnerability of many people like her (and a large number of readers of this blog) and the risk they face every day on their technology, from scam emails, texts and fake websites. 15/3/2021 0 Comments If you are starting a career as a scammer, at least learn the difference between your and you're I have received this one multiple times over the past couple of weeks, to different email addresses that I have for this business.
I didn't even have to open it to know it was a scam! I would think that the ATO would at least know the difference between 'your' and 'you're' (subject is Confirm you're refund) if it was to tell me I have a refund. If I had missed that glaring grammar error, what else would have told me this one is a scam?  My husband Jim received a text today (see above photo) that very nearly caught him out. In fact, I know of at least one other person DID fall for the same scam in the same week.
 (This article was originally published in Feb 2019 - we are re-publishing it after recent issues encountered by an iTandCoffee client, as a warning to others.) You may have already read one or more of the articles we published about email 'sending' issues suffered by several iTandCoffee clients in the first week of February 2019. A common theme for each of these clients was that they used Google to find a phone number for Technical Support. Two of them found a number for Bigpond Technical Support, and the other for Microsoft Technical Support. The question is: Did they really call Bigpond and Microsoft, or did they get a business that pretends to offer this support? One of the clients did get caught out and call a fake 'Bigpond Support' number.  Client Nicola has asked a question about dealing with scam callers and how to block them.
Blocking a scam caller is easy on your iPhone - we'll walk through the steps below. But it is also handy to know that Apple has included a new feature for dealing with scam callers, one that many people will be keen to turn on. Read on for more details.  Many of you will have seen press around the recent revelation by Google about a vulnerability that existed briefly in Apple's iOS, a vulnerability that was patched about 6 months ago.
I regularly tell clients how safe they are using an i-Device, that they can't catch a virus or spyware. So I was really concerned when I saw the press reports on this - wondering if I had given my clients a false sense of security.  Please be on the alert to the increasing incidence of scam text messages that can appear in a 'legitimate' conversation.
What I mean is that, if you see a message appear from the Commbank or ANZ Bank or Australia Post (or any sender like that), it may appear legitimate because it is preceded in the same 'conversation' by lots of valid texts from that business. 17/6/2019 11 Comments How easily your mobile number can be stolen - as this iTandCoffee client found You may have seen recent articles in the press about the increasing incidence of mobile number porting - where a person's mobile number is moved to a different mobile service provider by an unknown person. If this happens, you suddenly find you no longer have mobile service. You may first receive a message that tells you the porting is happening - generally when it it is too late to stop it.
How can number porting happen? What benefit can a thief get from stealing a mobile number belonging to someone else. |
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